The family romance has been presented by the Freudians as complicated by actual incestuous entanglements. Adler on the other hand has shown that the incestuous situation is rather an "as if" introduced by the neurotic as a part of his absurd life plan. Barring a few exceptions, the small boy does not desire his mother sexually nor does the small girl feel erotic at the thought of her father.
That such incestuous desires arise at the time of puberty cannot be doubted. But they are observed mostly in neurotics to whom the incestuous situation suggests, as I pointed out in the previous chapter, to the boy, food, comfort, the mother's easily won love, to the girl, the protection and the attentions of the strong father. In many cases too, homosexual and incestuous practices among the children in one family mean nothing but the neurotic search for the line of least effort.
[Pg 42]
Freud seeks at times very far fetched explanations for very simple phenomena in order to show the sexual motive at the bottom of them. He states in his Introduction to Psychoanalysis that a girl may show great affection for a younger sister "as a substitute for the child she vainly wished from the father." The truth is that the older daughter, in her close imitation of her mother, also starts "mothering" a child.
"A boy," Freud states in the same book, "may take his sister as the object of his love to replace his faithless mother." He rather imitates his father and starts to protect and order about a little female of his age, which at times, when both have witnessed the parental embraces, may lead to actual incest.
The Incest Fear. Incest is at the present day the form of sexual relation which provokes the most powerful expression of disapproval on the part of civilised and uncivilised races alike. In fact the primitive races seem obsessed by a panicky fear of incest. In many tribes, brothers and sisters are not allowed to meet or speak to each other and, in certain cases, they must even avoid the sight of each other and eschew every mention of each other's names.
In the Fiji Islands, where the rules against incest[Pg 43] are especially rigorous, there are, on the other hand, special holidays on which orgies are held in which incest becomes permissible.
In other words, the natives of those islands, while recognising the irresistible nature of the incest temptation and taking all sorts of measures in order to prevent the commission of that sin, supply at stated intervals an outlet for incestuous cravings.
Innumerable details of primitive legislation separate the son-in-law from the mother-in-law, the father-in-law from his son's bride.
The Basogas of the Upper Nile loathe incest to such a degree that they punish it even in animals whenever it can be observed among them.
Incest in Ancient Times. The horror of incest, however, is a relatively recent development in human psychology and ethics. The ancient dynasties of Egypt and Peru practiced incest. Incest was indulged in by all the archaic gods. The authors of the book of Genesis must have accepted the idea of incest as the sole means of explaining Adam's and Eve's descendants.
The horror of incest which we all feel or pretend to feel, is indeed an acquired feeling. Since every race has adopted stern legal measures to prevent in[Pg 44]cest, it can only be because a desire for incest is one of the cravings which mankind is constantly struggling against.
As Frazer says: "There is no law commanding men to eat and drink or forbidding them to put their hands in the fire. Men eat and drink and keep their hands out of the fire instinctively."
If men and women avoided incest instinctively no legislation would be needed compelling them to avoid it.
Indeed the confessions received by psychoanalysts reveal that the first sexual desires of the young are directed toward children of the opposite sex within the family circle. The many slight or serious indiscretions of an incestuous nature in which neurotic brothers and sisters indulge in infancy and childhood are generally "forgotten," that is, repressed, in later years, but analytic probing brings a great amount of such repressed material to the surface.
Since neither animals nor human beings experience any natural fear of incest, why is it that all races are officially so afraid of it?
Inbreeding. It cannot be due to the fear of race deterioration consequent upon inbreeding. Inbreeding is not necessarily a harmful process of reproduction as East and Jones have shown in their book on[Pg 45] "Inbreeding and Outbreeding." It seems to have, at times, for instance in Athens during the classic age, led to the production of many very superior individuals.
Furthermore the primitive savages who punish incest even among domestic animals have no conception of such eugenic theories. Some of them, incredible as it may sound, do not even realise the relation of cause to effect which exists between intercourse and pregnancy.
Freud offers an explanation based upon the Darwinian hypothesis of the primal horde in which the old father kept all the females for himself and drove away the growing sons.
This state of affairs has been observed among herds of wild cattle and horses. It generally leads to the killing of the oldest bull or stallion by the younger males.
The Primal Horde. Freud assumes that this must have been the usual occurrence in the primal horde. One day the sons joined hands and killed the father.
"Though the brothers had joined forces in order to overcome the father, each was the others' rival among the women. Each one wanted to have them all to himself like the father, and in the fight of each[Pg 46] against the others the new organization would have perished. For there was no longer any one stronger than all the rest who could have successfully assumed the role of the father. Thus there was nothing left for the brothers to do, if they wished to live together, but to erect incest prohibitions, perhaps after many difficult experiments, in the course of which they may all have renounced the women whom they desired."
In other words, the incest taboo was adopted to assure peace within the family circle, a convenience measure dictated by jealousy.
Repressed Incestuous Feelings may at times drive one into a most objectional form of behavior. A brother who in childhood was too fond of his sister (or vice versa) may, from an unconscious desire for self-protection, adopt a hostile attitude to his sister. The more attracted he was to her the more sadistic he will appear in later years.
He may even avoid all the women who would in any way suggest his sister and in that way never feel satisfied in love, for the women who cannot possibly suggest to him his sister, lack all the fetishes which would vouchsafe him safety and eroticism.
Such a man should be analysed and made to realise the incestuous cravings which he has repressed into his unconscious. His hatred would then change into[Pg 47] affection and in his search of a mate he would logically seek the sister image which alone would insure him sexual happiness.
I have reconciled in that way several groups of brothers and sisters who had never been able to get along after puberty, altho most of them had developed a dangerous fondness for each other before puberty.
Repressed sister fixation like repressed mother fixation has been found on several occasions as one of the components of homosexualism in the man, father or brother fixation as one of the causes of frigidity in the woman.
Blood Relations. Mother or sister fixation is frequently the cause of marriage between blood relations. This sort of union has been unjustly suspected of breeding mental inferiors. We should rather say that it is the mental inferiors who seek their mate within the family circle. Unable to secure the mother or the sister as a mate, they select a woman who has as many of the family traits as possible, that they may feel more secure in her company. If a defective child is bred of such unions, it is not due to the close relationship of the parents but to the fact that too often one of the mates was deficient physically or mentally.
[Pg 48]
In this respect as in many others, self-knowledge and acceptance of one's personality, coupled with a courageous understanding of unavoidable biological facts, are the necessary conditions for perfect mental health and freedom.
The man with a mother or sister fixation, the woman with a father or brother fixation should be made aware of it, however slight or severe the fixation may be.
They must be made to realise that incestuous cravings are biological phenomena which for reasons of convenience have been made unlawful but which do not brand the individual experiencing them as a degenerate or a vicious person.
They must also be made to realise that their incestuous craving may be one of the symptoms of the neurotic search for the line of least effort, knowledge of which weakens the craving to the point of insignificance.
The individual with a biologically real incestuous fixation should accept it and seek its substitute gratification thru association with a suitable mate presenting in his or her person the fetishes of the loved parent or brother or sister.
The individual whose fixation is purely neurotic should be freed of it by analysis and allowed to seek a mate without being inhibited by ghosts.